If you haven’t figured it out by now, the Amazon Marketplace is highly seller agnostic. Most of the time, shoppers don’t even know who they’re buying from. Amazon doesn’t care who wins a sale as long as it’s seller who has a proven track record of providing the best possible customer experience (Amazon is going to end up with a cut anyway…). The Buy Box is Amazon’s vehicle for placing this type of seller front and center, and so you can bet that seller feedback is an influence in determining whose offer gets placed in the Buy Box.

For this reason, seller feedback, while not as prominently displayed in the purchase process as product feedback, should be taken seriously if a seller hopes to increase their Buy Box ownership share.

Seller Feedback Does Not Influence Sessions

When a customer is searching for a product, seller feedback never plays a role in product Discoverability (a.k.a. “Amazon SEO“). While product reviews can play a significant role in influencing sessions via search filters, a seller’s feedback score is not a lever sellers can pull to drive shoppers to a product detail page. As a result, the Amazon SERP is completely product-centric.

Seller Feedback and Its Effect on the Product Detail Page

Once on the product detail page, seller feedback is a factor in 2 main areas – The Buy Box and the Other Sellers page. Your seller feedback score – a percentage based on the positive feedback from your 1-5 star ratings – is a factor in the algorithmic determination of the Buy Box. This percentage is customer-facing on the Other Sellers page:

The above Other Sellers page is actually interesting example of different types of seller feedback scores. Amazon Warehouse Deals is rated like any other third-party seller, with an OK score and high volume of ratings. However, because the second seller is “just launched,” he/she doesn’t have any ratings and is likely not even Buy Box eligible. Amazon of course doesn’t have ratings for itself – not necessary for a golden child….

But the last seller, “Mc Saving” is suffering from a blatant lack of seller feedback volume. For this reason, their seller feedback score is as bad as can be. This is the value of high seller feedback volume – diminished influence of a single review on your overall score as well as social proofing as a professional seller. Feedback management solutions can help with increasing feedback volume.

When to Invest Resources into Seller Feedback Management

Truth be told, seller feedback is more of a secondary influence on the Buy Box. If you’ve been handling orders and customer service like a true professional seller, than your seller feedback score and volume should reflect that. When shifting your focus on driving product Buyability – increasing orders for your offers – then sellers should square away the main 2 levers to pull, fulfillment and landed price, before intentionally focusing on seller feedback.

Given that you have an offer for a competitive ASIN, are already doing FBA for that product, and are already offering the lowest possible price your business can handle, then focusing on seller feedback and seller rating are other areas where sellers can progressively improve upon to increase Buy Box ownership share.

Taking a couple steps back, when should a seller focus on increasing product Buyability? To answer this question, a seller must conduct an audit of their catalog to identify which products are driving the most value for their business. One key metric to look at will be the products that are receiving the most sessions while not having a very high Buy Box share.

In this 5-part series on Amazon product and seller reviews, we’ll dive into analyses on feedback management for the Amazon Marketplace:

About the AuthorJon Gregoire is the Director of Demand Generation at CPC Strategy. Jon heads up email marketing, content strategy, co-marketing, and revenue cycle efficiency. A UC San Diego grad, Jon is a Chicago native and full-time San Diego tourist. He enjoys Bear Grylls-like backpacking trips, archery, weekend getaways in Southern California, watching his beloved Chicago Bears, and bidaily coffee consumption.
Want to pitch a story? Reach out directly at jon(at)cpcstrategy.com. See all posts by this author here.